Cultural Myth Stop Motion | Update + Feedback

I wanted to add a quick update to the posts added earlier on about my Stop motion. I realized I had never added any of my inspiration, ideation, or definition, besides the mindmap posted early. I wanted to include extra processes to really explain where I was coming from.

Defining the assignment in my own words: 
I had felt that this assignment was to make a stop motion out of something we all believe in but don't really always address as something incorrect. My biggest step in understanding the assignment was relating it to celebrities, where we believe they have all these things they really do not. I used that as my biggest definition of the project.

Ideate:  I feel most of our ideation is done in one of my earlier blog posts. Our mind map was a huge inspiration behind where are idea for the project came from.

Collect: Michaela, my partner for this assignment, showed me some great examples of stopmotion unlike anything I had ever seen. This was similar to one of the things she showed me:

https://www.yelldesign.com/our-work/papermeal/

We really liked how they used paper ingredients and still created a food like dish. It was a big inspiration behind the idea of a stop motion that used food.

This is one of the specific examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBjLW5_dGAM

We almost considered copying the aestetic completely we enjoyed the stopmotion so much. This stopmotion by PES is very well made and also very aestethically pleasing to watch, which was also something we were going for.

Styleframes: I thought these had been added in a post, but it looks like the post never got published and got deleted. During the process, Michaela and I spent a lot of time on call and messaging to discuss things. These are two images heavily discussed about whether or not we liked the project. Both are included here as styleframes, and really show the true idea behind our stop motion. (seen above)

Feedback: I never talked about the feedback that had been shared about our project. We did not receive a lot of what I consider "hearty" feedback, real feedback to help us. We did hear a little bit about timing from classmates, critique on our cookies. I think the biggest problem was something I had really outlined before, and that is the inconsistent lighting and not choosing a good time to film. We could also work a bit harder on clarity of the message.

Cultural Myth Stopmotion | Final Version for Class

Click the link to see the video:

https://vimeo.com/256430629

Cultural Myth Stop Motion | Rough Draft

Here is the Rough Draft for the Cultural Myth stopmotion created for class. We originally imported all images into Adobe Premiere, not using the sequence. We found that when the images are arranged by type correctly in the folder, we can import them in a sequence.

I had made the audio to fit the 1:23 seconds (non-sequenced) images. Unfortunately, we had to go with this version because we did not have time to recraft the audio for class.

The version I am uploading is low quality and has the Premiere Preset Titles, not our finished After Effects titles we worked on. I will upload the next rough draft before the final.

If I was to do this again, I would change the time of day and working personally hands on with Michaela. We would change the length and the mixing of certain things, along with the way we labeled things and the centering of the images. I would also fix the audio to match the image sequence - something we are interested in doing for the finals.

Cultural Myth Stop Motion | Storyboard

Here is a list of ingredients:

• Sugar - Equality
• Butter - Possesions
• Vanilla - Sunshine
• Egg - Friendships
• Baking Soda - Education
• Water - Exploration
• Salt - Spirituality
• Chocolate - Love

Cultural Myth Stop Motion | Styleframes & Narrative

I tried to symbolize something within the style frames. Unfortunately, we had agreed upon using my partner's kitchen for the set up, so I did not have specific things. I chose to take pictures of eggs because those were items that did not change. This was supposed to show that the style was normal pictures. I used two different lightnings to describe whether there would be artificial light or just overhead light.

AGAIN, the point was to show that the style would be ordinary camera style frames.

We decided are narrative would proceed as follows - first, we would write out happiness in the flour, spread across the counter. Then, we would mix everything into one bowl, dumping the bowl on top of the happiness. We would kneed it so far into the dough that the happiness would be gone. Then, we would bake the cookie.

We have mentioned before that each ingredient will have a label. We have decided we will label directly on the ingredients. A list of ingredients symbolism will be included in my next post along with my storyboard.

Cultural Myth Stop Motion | Two Possible Narrative Solutions

Our mind map had four ideas that we fell in love with - profanity, hysteria, happiness, and constant validation. We then spoke of each of these ideas to develop something that could turn into a better narrative or an interesting piece. We agreed we liked the idea of Social Media affecting our happiness. I took his to mean: "the notion that social media is affecting our lives and we use it to validate ourselves."

My first narrative is a derrivation of the real myth, Pandoras Box. Pandora's Box revolves around the idea that by unleashing the box, you are allowing bad things to escape into the world. In my version, the box is the phone in the video. Crumpled up images would begin flowing out of the phone. They would continue to "un" crumple. Each one could be a thin model, an image of somebody wanting something else, and etc. We would than have to demonstrate the change in emotion - a frowning face, maybe made of another material. Anxiety is uncrumpling from the phone. Validation and Anxiety explained.

Another way to approach the situation would be to focus less on the validation of ourselves, and instead focus on the changing world and our desperation to keep up in social media. Our desperation takes away from our happiness. There's a presence of rebellion. We'd start with a large image of a  younger innocent model/celebrity. It would fall onto the word happiness - spelled with some type of particle. As it falls, all these drawings / collage images begin following on top, representing new changing pieces of her. She's no longer seen as herself, and the word happiness is destroyed.

Visual / Technical approach. I'm interested in having happiness spelled out in parts and physically ruining it by dropping objects on top. I am considering sound effects for the falling of this object that make it slightly humorous. I also like the idea that the pieces are from a collage and are placed on a thicker colored paper around them.

Awesome Inspiring Examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJh4nzf-0hI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MBUgz5mJ2M

Define Cultural Myth -- with your partner come up with 4 possible narrative solutions. To arrive at this, go through a brainstorming processes, together create a mind-map that you will photograph and include on your blog as part of your process.

From this mindmap -- each partner come up with 2 possible narrative solutions for your chosen Cultural Myth. Describe the narrative though a short two paragraph essay. Paragraph 1 introduces the narrative. Paragraph 2 describes visuals and technical approaches. Research & note example artists and their work.

Cultural Myth Stop Motion | Mindmap + Word List

This post is in regard to project one in my Intermediate Motion Graphics class.
Here is a picture of the mind map created, and below you can see how I categorized my words and my thought process.

WORD LIST:

Myth
Pandora's Box
Zeus
Athena
Native American Stories
Story of spider stealing the sunlight

Cultural
American Dream
Environment
Politics
Religion
Killing the American Dream
Freedom
Generational Divide

Cultural Myth
'Fake News' x Politics
Fame & feelings involved
Buying a house
Finding a job
Celebrities
'Space is fake!'
Smell
Skin color and how we treat people based on race
Educational System creating bullying